lazarus
by knotweed
Summary: In which Dino is permanently stuck on Tsuna's death, Hibari tries to speed up the healing process, and no one plays the leading man. Past D18.


**1.**

But have you ever thought about ships that sailed lazily through the sky? They'd be called airships, for the lack of a more creative term, and they'd look like blimps but not like blimps. Instead of looking below and seeing water, you'd be up in the atmosphere, looking at the bright night lights. And pop cans that opened when you warmed them up with your hands and closed when you pulled away. And nail polish that would get on your nails properly and evaporate when they touched skin. Perfection.

You know something of perfection, and he is sitting right in front of you, looking a little angry but nearly blank as he is wont to look. He is also clutching his expensive DoCoMo phone—you aren't even sure if he has service in Italy or not, but he's glaring at the screen anyway because he has no where else to look.

What a waste of those cute Japanese emoticons. It was the first thing you thought when you first laid your eyes on the sleek black phone. Kyouya has never failed to puzzle you.

The two of you are in the kitchen, in the bar area. He has barely touched his drink—but you should've seen that before coming because he's told you hundreds and millions of times that he doesn't drink—except, tonight is special in a kind of morbid way—and you have six empty glasses next to you. "Go drink yourself into a stupor," he had said on your third. "See if I care, herbivore."

"_Aiutati che Dio ti aiuta_," you say, voice thick with grief, leaning back in your seat and looking five years older than you actually are.

The sliding lid of his phone snaps promptly shut. He looks up at you with a strange expression, the look he's been perfecting over all the years you've known him. It's a sad look, sad in the way a hyena looks at a gazelle's carcass before the manic glee kicks in and their sharp teeth tear apart what's left of the dead flesh. But you should know better. Kyouya's not like that.

But the world is full of surprises today. Your little brother is dead, as well as your former home tutor, and your only student from ten years ago is sitting in front of you with his stupid expensive phone, and he's giving you a smile that's exactly one part bitter and one part wicked like he knows how you tick—and he's slowly taking off his jacket, faking the innocence of a priest—but you should know how innocent he really is, which is not very—and loosening his tie and he's saying to you: "Then help yourself."

(You didn't know it at that time, but it was his version of a prayer.)

-

**2.**

But you weren't so sure.

"Why is life so difficult when I'm near you?" he asks you, his voice raspy and hoarse, spitting out the blood from his mouth. It wasn't really a question. And there you were, trying to get his blood out of your blonde hair.

"Love is kind of hard," you reply.

"Do you think I am in love with you?" he retorts. He flicks off the remaining pieces of his shattered cloud ring from his sweaty hands and pulls out another one from the inner breast pocket of his suit and puts it on his index finger, lilac flames spilling out. He jams it into that familiar purple box, encrusted with pretty little silver accents, but still a little plainer than the rest you've seen.

Yes, you think.

"No," you say, and you're extremely good at acting like you don't care, but that's one incredibly bitter smile on your face.

-

**3.**

It was his way of saying "I'm sorry." Those two words, "I'm sorry"—well what the hell are you sorry for, you think. You don't feel sorry, at least not for him, not when he tells you that your hair is getting too long or too blonde, even less when he tells you that he's tired of fuck ups, whatever that's supposed to mean. You've asked him, once, on the night of Tsuna's funeral. "What's your definition of a 'fuck up'?" "Incompetent fools who are off schedule." "Those aren't fuck ups; those are just people who are off schedule." "But you asked me what a fuck up was. You don't make sense, herbivore." "Nothing's supposed to make sense." (But what the hell are you sorry for.)

You're drinking heavily again, one of your terrible habits, you told yourself that you would stop but you never did. In the file cabinets of your mind, it was under MINDLESS, next to chewing a whole pack of gum in under less than an hour and writing your favourite love poems on your paperwork. But it felt kind of nice to not know anything, letting your poison of choice run through your body and quite possibly killing your liver in the process. The wine is burning your throat.

It's cold outside, and the alcohol is giving you an illusion of being warm, which is something you know but don't care about. There must be a thousand ways to get warm, but your mind is permanently stuck on Tsuna—did he burn like this, was he burning with something, why did he think of himself as a martyr?

And it's always hard to think about the dead people who were once close to you—your subordinates, your friends, your father. When you were young, eight nine ten, you used to think that once you died, you would go up in Heaven and have a gigantic pasta party all day long with God. There would be a lot of outstretched arms and crying and many kisses on your cheeks. Most of all, you'd meet your mother, who you've never seen in person, only in thirty-five-year old photos in dusty albums. Would she hug you, would she cry on you, would she kiss your cheeks tired from faking smiles so often?

You don't believe in ghosts, but Kyouya does, which is another thing you know about and find a little strange. He doesn't talk to you about it, but how many nights have you lain awake and heard him murmur about them?

And you thought he was the rational one.

You sort of wish you did believe in them now, but it's impossible to believe in something you don't believe in. It's like switching your religion—God always knows if you're being sincere or not. You figure that it's the same with ghosts—they don't care if you believe in them or not, because they'd rather linger with believers instead. You wonder if Kyouya sees ghosts, is that why he's so quietly persistent on them, that's the way he's always been, is he looking for someone other than you? Maybe it's his parents, or maybe he's looking at his grandfather when he zones out on you like he does so often. Maybe it's an emperor whose name was never written down on the history textbooks, or René Magritte with one of his bowler hats on, or Anastasia, you know the one, the czar's daughter, Anastasia in Japan, the thought of that makes you laugh.

And what about Tsuna? If you believed in ghosts with the same determination that Kyouya had, would you be able to see Tsuna, too? And Reborn, and your father, and your mother.

You wonder if God is a ghost in disguise, if God was only a collection of consciousnesses, a gigantic pile of love and joy. You could be God, too, if only you've found some way to take all the sadness and pain and longing away and store the happiness in a bottle. That's God. God is in a bottle.

"_Aiutati che Dio ti aiuta_," you had said to him that night. God helps those who help themselves, but you haven't seen Kyouya in a long time.

-

**4.**

You wish you could sleep, or at least fall into a coma, because anything is better than being in an insomnia-ridden haze every day. And it seems like you've tried everything. You've won 57 out of 363 games in solitaire. Life goes on.

At least, life goes on until, after weeks of avoiding it, you return to your study and take out your reading glasses and do the rest of the paperwork. There's always paperwork to be done, which is something you don't complain about anymore because you're thirty-two now (which makes you cringe—the number, not the work) and it's been sixteen years since you've filled out your first form, but you remark, off-handedly, of course—because that's just the kind of person you are—to Romario that you feel like you're drowning (you don't say in what) and he gives you a look that is both relieved and scared.

It goes like this, for another few weeks, until you return home one day to celebrate with your men in the room (it's the first time in months that there hasn't been an assassination attempt on you) only to find that Kyouya is there, in your leather swiveling chair with a Bible in his hand.

The first thing you thought was that that Bible was now tainted forever.

The first thing that comes out of your mouth is, "What the hell, Kyouya," which was supposed to come out as "I haven't seen you in ages, how have you been?" but (1) you're thirty-two now and (2) you're tired. You haven't slept well in months.

But he doesn't look surprised, because he's never surprised. If anything, he raises an eyebrow at your men behind you, signaling to them that it was alright, he wasn't going to bite you to death. As they file out the door, shakier than they've been in years, you feel the malaise of having to deal with him set into your bones. He beckons you over, which is something strange and unexpected, but nothing makes sense anymore, not after Tsuna and Reborn's deaths.

"You're tired," he says, his attention snapping back to the Bible as you fall gracelessly into the chair before him. You feel as if the roles have been reversed—he's you and you're him.

"Sure," you say, reaching over to salvage a few sheets of the neglected paperwork because you're not in the mood to argue or even talk like the civilized person you are, but he slaps your hand away without even looking up and you pull back.

"You're disrupting my connection with God," he says flatly, and the way he says it makes you laugh, like he's talking about an internet server, not a big collection of love and hope and ghosts. You say so. "That's God you're talking about," you chide, and his left eyebrow rises slightly as he flips the page, but it could be only your imagination. "Since when did you believe in God, anyway?"

"You think that, just because I'm Japanese, I'm Buddhist?" He flips the thick, black leather-bound book shut.

"I didn't say that," you say.

"But you implied it," he replies. He spins himself to the computer and elegantly pulls out the flashdrive that was plugged into it and stuffs it into his pocket. It's on your tongue. You don't need to be so graceful with a flashdrive, you want to say. It's not a fight. "I don't believe in some obese, laughing herbivore with big earlobes," he goes on to say nonchalantly. "What's so funny about being fat?"

And you have no idea what to say, so you study your fingers instead. Since when was he you and you him?

He tilts his head a little bit to the right, which is something you know about him. He does that when he's about to ask you a question. "Tell me about Lazarus," he says, a little softer, but maybe that's because he can see ghosts. And you are so convinced, you're so wrapped up in that that you can't even see how stupid the thought of it is.

"He…" you begin, but all the memories of Sunday school and the somber choirs in all the dusty churches, praying for ghosts suddenly evaporate. Maybe it's the lack of sleep, or maybe it's because Kyouya is right in front of you, asking you about someone he could care less about. Maybe it's because you've finally realized that you two have fallen apart a very long time ago, and these spiteful little encounters—him taunting you and you letting yourself be taunted—are just the tiny scraps left of whatever was there—like cities connected by roads, and when you take out the cities, all you have is longing. You don't know what you saw him in before but you wish you could, and he knows it, that he's not good enough for you the way you want him to be and you're not good enough for him the way he wants you to be, and all he can do is play his overdone game of cat and mouse and talk to his beautiful, beautiful ghosts.

"He died," you finally say, looking up from your big hands and into his eyes, searching his face. "And he was brought back to life, because he believed in God, and so Jesus gave him a new life to live. Something like that. A miracle."

Kyouya looks sad in that hyena kind of sad. You don't think it looks good on him, the way it spreads throughout his face like putting dye into a tub of water; diffusion.

"Do you want to steal a miracle?" he asks, the head-tilting again, the blasé voice again, the calm before the storm again, but you don't know what to say, you don't even know what that means. You let him steer you towards his direction. There's nothing new in this.

But he's not you and you're not him. If he were you, he'd be putting his cold hands on your shoulder, telling you that everything will be OK and rubbing your back comfortingly, and you'd be frowning and resisting his touch, choosing instead to focus on those funny light bulbs, the ones that remind you of the rest of a snail in its shell. He'd be telling you about it. "Snail zombies," he'd say if he was you and you were him.

"I'm tired," you say.

"You have insomnia," he says, and that's the hurricane, that's the hyena face, poorly hidden behind the veil of fake patience. "You haven't slept for days. You're drinking again because you can't sleep. You wish you could see him again."

And you're surprised at how he knows. His face is still straight, and you tell him. "We haven't talked to each other in months," you say, uncharacteristically poisonous.

"He told me what was going on with you," he says, a very knowing smile on his face before it disappears in an instant. You stand up abruptly, chair screeching across the wooden floors, but he does nothing and you want to slap him. Instead, he glances at your paperwork instead and says, "There's a report on the rings and boxes in your folder. You should read it."

Before you can even stop him, he's out the door. You have no time to say "Who" and "is" and "'He?'" You don't love him, nor do you love the sound of the slamming door, and you hate that he has his ghosts and you have nothing but a memory. You don't sleep that night.

-

**5.**

But you don't read the report, either. The estate is under siege and your men are bored to death, but you could care a little less.

For some reason, French music is stuck in your head, and that is never a good thing because you hate the French, only not really, because that is somewhat of a stereotype. You don't even know where the music comes from, but the distinctive whole-quarter-quarter harmony on the piano replays in your head over and over again.

Romario places his reassuring warm hands on your shoulders one day and says to you gently, "Everything will be OK."

Something about the way he says it makes you want to cry. You used to say it like that—soft and tender. You used to say it all the time to Kyouya—"Everything will be OK"—and he used to say, "How are you going to make that happen?" and you would just laugh and shake your head. But you're thirty-two now.

("I don't feel well." "Everything will be OK." "The new prime minister is an herbivore." "Everything will be OK." "In case you haven't noticed, you just got shot." "Everything will be OK."

OK, OK, OK.)

-

**6.**

You liked him best when he was younger, when he was just a little bit easier to manipulate, when he could be broken down by just a few words and touches, and then he grew up and realised how little he needed you.

You suddenly remember that brief period of time when he let you stay, and you had plucked his pen from the bedside and wordlessly wrote Italian all over his skin. If you took his arm, he merely looked placidly over his shoulder, watching as the ink spilled from the pen to his thin wrists, skimming over his scruffy elbows, circling the area where his heart was. Your handwriting was neat because you were in no hurry. The words were in cursive, print, all caps. You drew papillon dogs on his neck and stars on his cheek because he made you feel tired, and that's not love. Cranes in flight appeared on his back. You told him that he should get that tattooed. His smile was thin. He didn't think any of it because it simply washes away.

_Jai guru deva om_ appeared one night when his grandfather passed away, and _Ye chang meng duo_ was on his shoulder, but he had let you write all over him. _Contentement passe richesse_, his knees said; _Sonbadageuro haneuloeul gariryeohanda_ was on his arms.

He pointed at _Aiutati che Dio ti aiuta_ on his heart.

"What does this mean," he murmured into your shoulder. In his voice there was one part conceit and one part heartache, and suddenly you felt so sorry for him, that selfish little boy who would never grow up. It made you want to cry and it also made you want to slap him. Why can't you grow the hell up, you wanted to say. Why can't you see that I am trying so hard. Why can't you be kind to me.

"'Help yourself,'" you lied, because you were tired, pretending that it was a prayer.

-

**7.**

You first heard about Tsuna from Kusakabe, who had grown up to be a million times more grown-up than Kyouya, and you are a little surprised but also not surprised, either. Kyouya had given you a hint, in the study, but you never touched the report—it was 300 pages long, which was 275 pages too long for you. You don't try to mollify him anymore.

He had put himself on the phone. "What do you know about parallel universes?" he said, getting straight to the point like he always did.

"I don't even know what you're talking about," you said.

There is a tiny hitch of breath on the other side of the line, which is something you didn't know about, which made him sound like he was actually having sex, which made him sound like he was slightly reluctant to tell you, which made you realise that he was being sincere about this.

"You didn't read the report," he said after a very long silence. You can imagine what he looks like now: a frown on his face, sipping tea from a ceramic mug, exhaling through his nose.

"No, I didn't," you said, not even giving an excuse for yourself, because what's the use? Kyouya wasn't one for excuses, especially petty ones like deaths and funerals or family-related business. If anything, he seemed even more productive during funerals because while everyone else mourned, he was holed up wherever he was holed up and worked until he fell asleep at his desk. "But you knew about him. About Tsuna. You kept it from all of us." You tried your best to sound not as angry as you really were.

There was a pause again.

"Read it," he said.

"No," you said. "Why can't you tell me over the phone. Why can't you be less of an ass. Why can't you just ignore everything—bugging the phone, spies, people in the vent—and tell me what the hell is going on."

"Dino," he said, and if you were anyone else it would've sounded like he was pleading, because that was the first time in ten years that he has ever said your name.

"Please don't call me Dino," you said, and you hung up the phone.

Right now you're thinking about the man who invented umbrellas. What if he made it that the part that opened up was inside-out so that you had to balance all the rain that got caught in the bowl or it'd spill out? What if water bottles had a floating device attached to them so that they'd float once you drank all the water? You've always had a habit of leaving empty bottles on your desk until they became an eyesore and you had to walk all the way down to the recycling bin. What if you could snap your fingers and everything in the house would be in order? What if everything had a red flashing light so that if you misplaced it, you could find it in an instant?

What if you could win every game of Solitaire you played? What if everyone was a pacifist? What if Tsuna and Reborn were alive?

But, you tell yourself, it's not the time to be dwelling on what if's and what not's. You were determined to leave the past behind, because the fifteen-year-olds that showed up suddenly in Japan and can't get back home is not your past anymore.

-

**8.**

Sometimes you wish you lived in one of René Magritte's paintings: a man with a pretty suit and a briefcase and a bowler hat and fruit obscuring your face. It would be nice. No one would ever bother you, but you don't live in a fantasy world. The real world is ending soon, anyway.

YOU ARE ONE STUPID PIECE OF SHIT, the first text message reads, and you know Kyouya is serious about this because it doesn't say "herbivore."

GO TO JAPAN, YOU DEAF GIT, says the second one.

OR ELSE I'LL BITE YOU TO DEATH comes a few seconds after the previous.

And it's only when you read (I CAN'T TALK RIGHT NOW BECAUSE I AM WATCHING SAWADA TSUNAYOSHI DIE FROM LACK OF OXYGEN INSIDE MY BOX WEAPON, SO DO NOT CALL ME UNLESS YOU WANT TO DIE WITH HIM) that you truly laugh for the first time in months and finally understand without even reading the 300-page report.

-

**9.**

There he is, in your lavish hotel room, lying on the cerise satin sofa and reading a book like he owns the place, even though you didn't tell him you'd be there. But this is Japan; this is Namimori, where he has eyes over everything and anything. "Hello," you murmur as you step inside the room, closing the door behind you, and he doesn't look up but nods anyway. "I used to want to hurt you," you say quite honestly, and there's a ghost of a smile on his face. "But I think I calmed myself down over the months." You sound almost cheerful. It's a rough start, but it's a start, nevertheless.

"Would you like a task?" he says. Without waiting for your answer, he says, "You should let go." He looks at you. "You should cut your hair. You haven't cut it since Sawada Tsunayoshi."

Is this, you wonder, his way of being tender? Or is this how he hurts you, by pressing on the tender pieces of your heart? You can't remember. "Mm, but I like it this way," you said, but it's a poorly-told lie and even he can see. He couldn't read people even if his life depended on him, because that's just the way he is.

"Do you want to steal a miracle?" he asks, and his head is tilted to the right, just a little bit.

"What?" you say.

"You can't always have a nice ending, but you can make the best of a bad one," he says, and this is kind of déjà vu, the way he reminds you of yourself and you remind yourself of him. "You can steal a miracle from that self-proclaimed God. Cut your hair so you can live a new life. Go to them after the raid on the Melone base so their future won't be like this." And, as if that was the end of everything, he turned back to his book and began to read from where he left off. "You're being kind of a burden," he says honestly. "I suggest you go and do something productive."

"Aren't you going to do something, also?" you ask.

"I've done things," he replies mysteriously. "I almost killed the Sawada Tsunayoshi from the past." He briefly glances up at you. "I'll be going soon," he says quietly, and is this his way of being tender? You can't remember anymore, and before you can, he looks down again. "To make sure they're not dead yet," he adds after an uncomfortable pause.

It stays like that for a while, you leaning against the wall and him on the sofa, and only the sounds are his page-flipping, the air conditioner, and your breathing.

"But what if I can't let go," you say abruptly.

"Herbivore," he says, and that's almost how he sounded Before Tsuna (you begin to think of life as Before Tsuna and After Tsuna), almost affectionate but mostly mocking, his version of cheerful, "even the lowest of low-lives can let go." He snaps the book shut and walks to the door, mere inches from you. "God helps those who help themselves," he says slowly. "So help yourself."

That's a prayer.

Standing there, all you can remember is when he started to grow up. He wrote _Aiutati che Dio ti aiuta_ on a sticky note and stuck it to your forehead. He said, "You think I don't know Italian?" "I didn't know that you knew proverbs." "I know a lot of things," he said vaguely. "I am very sure that you do." "I know that you're a herbivore and miracles don't exist." "You're wrong on the miracles bit." "There is no God." "God doesn't make a miracle; timing does." "But what is that supposed to mean." You took off the sticky note and stuck it to his left cheek. It was a kiss from paper to skin. "It means I'm not Roman Catholic anymore." "You gave up." "That's a mean way to put it, but sure, if it makes you happy. I gave up."

"I'm tired," he had said.

You had looked at him.

"Goodbye, Dino," says the present Kyouya with a very sharp smile. You miss this confident smile, the one without any anger or bitterness and cruelty. Suddenly you remember what it's like to be forced to carry a burden, but he's out the door before you could even ask if he's okay or say "Why you?" or "Thank you" or "Good God, I love you more than either you or I will ever know."

-

**10.**

You remember this face—sullen, stubborn, and almost pretty if you tilt your head to the right a little. You remember this Kyouya, the angry one, the one before he had let you write all over him, words that never made much sense, mindless but pretty nothings. He looks perturbed, you think, because he has been told the truth.

"Hello, Kyouya," you say, snapping him out of his thoughts, and he is startled for just a fraction of a second before his mouth sets into a firm line. This false pretense is the closest thing you will ever give as an apology to the present him. This is the next best thing.

"What are you doing here?" he snarls, raising his tonfa. "This is school property."

"You don't own this place anymore," you reply good-naturedly, and it's a little frightening to see how fast you settle back into the Dino he knew from ten years ago. It's so easy to drop away all the anger and bitterness and cruelty. He raises an eyebrow elegantly, and that's when you remember that he is not yours; he was never yours until those somber, quiet nights in his room where the only lighting was the moon and the only thing you saw was him and the words on his skin.

"Come on," you say when he says nothing, "I'll whip you up into shape."

"It's you who needs discipline," he quips.

But you're almost thirty-three, and what a sad age that is to be. You kind of want to tell him that he's a selfish motherfucker. "Kyouya," you say instead, "would you like to steal a miracle?"

He gives you a ghost of a smile, mirth replaced by sheer determination. That's what a ghost is, you think; taking something and replacing it with something else. "The only miraculous thing about a miracle," he says, twirling the tonfa in his right hand, and that's the sign telling you to pull out your whip, "is the timing of one."

"Smart thing, you," you say with a beam—because you are not surprised—and run to him.

-

(HINDI) _Jai guru deva om_ / जय गुरु देवा ॐ — "victory to God divine"  
(CHINESE) _Ye chang meng duo _/ 夜長夢多 — "the longer the night, the more dreams you will have"  
(FRENCH) _Contentement passe richesse_ — "happiness is worth more than riches"  
(KOREAN) _Sonbadageuro haneuloeul gariryeohanda_ / 손바닥으로 하늘을 가리려한다 — "don't try to cover the sky with the palm of your hand"  
(ITALIAN) _Aiutati che Dio ti aiuta_ — "God helps those who help themselves"


End file.
